A/HRC/38/51 80. A month before the polls, the Chair of the Central Election Commission had clarified that amendments to the Electoral Code could be made only once the Constitution had been amended. 29 While the Government could have used that occasion to test implementing at least some of the long-standing recommendations made by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights on the occasion of previous polls, the authorities continued to intimidate candidates by, for instance, videotaping their meetings, conducting defamation campaigns, manipulating lists to ensure the loyalty of candidates, inflating turnout figures and violating media freedoms. Journalists and bloggers were expelled from polling stations, sometimes violently, 30 and two major news websites were blocked before the elections (see section VI (A) above on media freedom). Members of the political opposition are often refused registration as candidates on the basis of petty grounds, such as small inaccuracies on the corresponding forms. However, some of the appeals lodged against such decisions have been successful. 31 81. Despite minor improvements in, for instance, the allocation of locations to hold campaign events, the opposition, which, in September 2016, was permitted to send two representatives to the otherwise entirely pro-government National Assembly, the February local elections did not bring even partial concessions. According to the information available to the Special Rapporteur, only one opposition candidate obtained a seat, in a village council. The way in which the February 2018 elections were held should not only be seen as a continuation of the abuse experienced at previous elections, but also as a rehearsal for the nationwide mechanism used to thwart the right to free and fair elections, ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for 2019 and 2020 respectively. 82. The Special Rapporteur was pleased to see that two independent groups, Human Rights Defenders for Free Elections and Right to Choose 2018 (a coalition of opposition parties), tried to exercise their right to observe the elections. Both groups reported on their lack of access to the premises where vote counting was being carried out. The Right to Choose 2018 media centre installed for the election was closed following pressure by the State Security Agency on election day. Some of the members of Right to Choose 2018 and other activists, who were filming and livestreaming events on social media, were jostled by the entourages of the pro-government candidates: other activists were detained by the police for several hours and one was sentenced to seven days in detention. The Special Rapporteur welcomes the courage and efforts of those persons who attempted to livestream the elections, a first in Belarus. I. The rule of law and the independence of judges and lawyers 83. As demonstrated by the Special Rapporteur in his previous reports, there is virtually no rule of law in Belarus, owing to the extent of the power of the executive branch over the National Assembly, the judiciary and legal professionals. On 25 January 2018, for instance, President Lukashenko met with the Chair of the Lower Chamber of the National Assembly to discuss the Assembly’s potential, and to find out whether it contained promising people.32 The only reported marginal progress, which, however, needs to be fully confirmed with regard to facts and dates, is a number of requests by certain Prosecutor’s Offices to further investigate allegations of police violence (see paragraph 67 above). 84. The latest developments in that regard concern the reprisals and intimidation carried out by the authorities against independent lawyers who defend human rights activists, especially those who were involved in the rallies of February and March 2017 and in the “White Legion case”. The mere fact that the Minsk City bar association removed one of its members, Hanna Bakhtsina, in absentia and without prior notice, on the basis of her lack of 29 30 31 32 14 See https://www.svaboda.org/a/28989238.html (in Belarusian). See https://rsf.org/en/news/journalists-bloggers-barred-vote-count-belarus. See https://spring96.org/files/misc/local_elections_2018_final_report_en.pdf. See http://president.gov.by/en/news_en/view/meeting-with-chairman-of-house-of-representativesvladimir-andreichenko-17940/.